


Under the Blank Slate

by vassalady



Category: Captain America (Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gift Fic, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Thor (2011), Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-18 04:46:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2335847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vassalady/pseuds/vassalady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki goes to Midgard to amuse himself and finds a challenge in the blank slate that is the Winter Soldier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under the Blank Slate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neverminetohold](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverminetohold/gifts).



> This is a gift for neverminetohold! They said, under scenario they might enjoy, "Loki somehow (infiltrating HYDRA to become his handler for example) getting involved with the Winter Soldier before the Thor/Avenger movie." I really like "Loki goes down to Earth prior to Thor" stories, so I played around with that! It's pretty short for the scope of the idea, but I hope you still enjoy it!
> 
> Thank you to the mods for running the fest!

Loki grew bored of trailing after Thor and his little gang of head bashers. He decided to slip away through the secret passages that escaped Heimdall’s eyes. If he were gone for a handful of months, no one would miss him. That kind of time meant little when one lived centuries.

One day, as he was passing through a city (New York, it was called), he witnessed a car crash. It was elegant how it occurred. Seemingly out of nowhere, a man with a metal arm stepped forward, and an oncoming car (clearly a target, as the man lofted a gun), careened to the side.

What interested Loki was not the crash itself; it was the efficiency with which the man checked whether the people in the car were indeed dead and left it at that.

No wasted effort. A bit simple, but striking to an observer nonetheless.

Loki followed the man.

Unfortunately, his owners kept him frozen, he found out easily enough. (There was nowhere in Midgard Loki could not get into. A suggestion here, the right word there, and he could slip his way into anything. Midgardians were so simple minded.)

It took next to no time to see the man for himself.

“Codename Winter Soldier,” the man known as Alexander Pierce said. “We only use him for the most sensitive of operations, you understand.”

Loki smirked. “Why use a bomb when all you need is a pistol?”

Pierce laughed and patted the cryogenic tank. “And what a bomb we have.”

Loki had meant the Winter Soldier as the pistol, of course. He knew Pierce wouldn’t understand. He admired Pierce’s methods, the use of subterfuge over brute force. But he failed to see that the Winter Soldier was that gun strapped against a body until just the right moment, and a whole nation could crumble.

It was shortly after that Loki was given the role of the Winter Soldier’s handler. Pierce trusted him. Or rather, Pierce trusted “Loren Olson,” as Loki went by. Loren shared the dream, and Loren had the wit that Pierce was looking for in a successor.

Simple minded humans.

When he first released the Winter Soldier from his tank, he asked, “Do you know who I am?”

The Winter Soldier stared blankly at him.

Loki stepped up to him, close enough that he was in reach of that metal arm of his, but Loki had no fear.

“I am your new handler. You will report to me. I will give you missions and you will carry them out. Understand?”

The Winter Soldier nodded.

Loki stared in wonder at what a blank slate he was. He rested a hand against his temple and felt almost nothing. These human scientists had done well at wiping his mind.

But underneath that, there was something still present. Loki intended to find it.

\--

The Winter Soldier did not provide the sort of amusement Loki usually sought. He could not banter with him. Instead, he absorbed Loki’s words, silent as ever, except when giving a mission report.

Loki grew fed up with it. “This whole idea was a mistake. You’re worse than Hogun,” he spat, throwing himself down into a chair. “At least his silences contain weight. You… You have nothing to say. I thought you’d be interesting, and yet...” It seemed they did too good a job with crafting their weapon. Loki hated to admit Midgardians were good at anything, but this grew boring.

Loki had been working with the Winter Soldier for almost a year now, and there was not one word from him that did not relate to his mission.

So when he heard, “Who is Hogun?” Loki almost did not believe it.

He grinned to himself. “So your mind is still there after all…” He knew it had to be. He had felt it, however faint. And it had been that mind that shaped the Winter Soldier’s skill. Without that base, he could have grown wild, uncontrollable. There was a reason there was only one Winter Soldier instead of a horde of them. He was a precision killer, back even when he had been this James Barnes (yes, Loki had seen the files), and this was what Loki was after.

“A friend of my brother’s,” Loki said. “A bore, although his jibes, when he chooses, do have an edge.”

The Winter Soldier did not say anything else for a long time. Loki wondered if maybe that was all he had in him. But then the Winter Soldier said, “Sharp or dull?”

Loki, pleased, smirked. There was hope yet.

\--

The cryo tank interfered with the Winter Soldier’s progress, so Loki convinced Pierce to let him keep the asset out for longer periods. Soon, Loki kept him so long, everyone felt there was little point in putting him under. To all outside eyes, he behaved just as before. On missions, he kept that precision.

When it was just him and Loki, things were different.

“There are other worlds out there, you know,” Loki said. They were lounging on his couch, his feet up on the arm, his head in the Winter Soldier’s lap. The Soldier proved to be very invested in touch, something left from who he used to be, so Loki granted him that. His right hand stroked Loki’s hair.

“Outside the hell we’re both headed for?” The Soldier said this with a wry smile. He knew that he killed. But he believed the rhetoric Pierce fed him regularly. He had to. There was nothing else for him to hold on to.

But that didn’t mean some hidden moral code wasn’t peeking through for a little self-deprecating humor.

Loki snorted. “Hel is no place to be, trust me. Dreadful and run by a woman who thinks she’s inescapable.’

“Death is inescapable.”

Loki quirked an eyebrow up at him. “And how would you know? You admit your world view is limited.”

The Soldier shrugged, and then he got that little half smirk of his. “Because I’m inescapable.”

Loki grinned. “So far.”

“You’re here.”

That prompted a laugh. “I’m here because this is my job, not because you caught me.”

The Soldier tilted his head to look more closely at Loki. “But… you weren’t always. Right?”

Loki took a moment to answer. “No. Of course not.”

The Soldier’s mouth twisted down in concentration. “You said once that I was a mistake. No, not me. This job?”

Loki sat up. He didn’t like the Soldier throwing his own words back at him. That was what he did, not the other way around.

But he wouldn’t still be here if the Soldier was like every other Midgardian.

“Yes, a mistake. A flight of fancy that, at the time, was fruitless.”

“And now?”

Loki met the Soldier’s eyes. Part of what had originally made the Soldier so interesting was his efficiency. He was unlike Thor, who expended more energy than he needed. Then, the blankness had been intriguing. Loki had wanted to break through, to see if there was anything underneath, and he had.

The answer was, no, it wasn’t a mistake once the Soldier had started talking back.

But now, what made him stay?

“You know you don’t belong here,” Loki said. “You’re not like the others here. You don’t fit. They either fear you or see you as nothing more than a tool.” He scooted closer, until he was mere inches from the Soldier. “But me, I know your value. I can give you a place where you belong.”

And that right there was part of the appeal, Loki supposed. Loki didn’t have someone who saw as he did. Who saw what was necessary sometimes. To be in the shadows rather than in the light. How that could win wars, instead of the petty battles where sword bashed shield.

Oh, Thor understood his ways well enough, but that didn’t mean he entirely approved of them. He saw Loki’s use, would protect him to the last, but also failed to see that Loki did not need his protection.

This man needed Loki’s in a way, though. Because he didn’t know what Loki knew, didn’t know how to truly harness it. He was a soldier, not a leader.

But it was men like the Winter Soldier that Loki needed. Silent, precise, and strong enough to even take on an Asgardian. Loki had seen his strength time and again. He would be a worthy match for any of Asgard’s warriors.

But who needed a hero when one had an assassin?

The Soldier searched his eyes for a long moment before responding. “But what use would I be there?”

“You don’t know the wonders out there,” Loki said. “You haven’t seen the falls of the elven lands or heard the smiths at work in dwarven kingdoms. You haven’t felt the chill of Jotunheim, nor the warmth of the sun of Asgard.”

Loki placed his hand on the Soldier’s arm. What Pierce failed to do was inspire the natural wonder and curiosity that the Soldier possessed. “If you fight for me, not for HYDRA, I can show you all that and more.”

The Soldier did not say anything, but he watched Loki carefully. He was paying attention, really paying attention.

“I can give you a name, an identity.”

And that was the honeypot. That was what the Soldier longed for, he knew. It was apparent in the way he pressed his face against the window, watching the pedestrians; in the way he stared at the mirror; in the way he looked at Loki and mouthed Loki’s Midgardian name.

“All you have to do,” Loki continued, “is swear allegiance to me. And I will show you worlds you never imagined.”

Loki, for once, didn’t expect what happened next. One of the things that made the Soldier so good at his job, the fact that he never broadcast his intentions beforehand, also was what kept him interesting and full of surprises.

He gave no indication that he meant to lean forward and kiss Loki before he did.

Loki didn’t not appreciate it. It simply took him a valuable few seconds to realize what was happening. And then he kissed back.

The Soldier wasn’t a great kisser, but there was something there, something locked away in his memory that he tried to chase down through that kiss. Loki could feel it in his earnestness.

They broke apart, and the Soldier’s breathing hitched. He turned away, hiding his face in his hands.

Loki touched his shoulder. “Come with me,” he said. “Come with me, and I will give you what you want the most.”

“I don’t know what I want!” The Soldier stood and in his panic, he knocked over the side table. He stared at it and then at Loki, and then he fled.

When Loki found the Soldier, he was in his cryo tank.

Pierce stood before it, hands behind his back, staring at the Winter Soldier.

“He came back erratic and confused,” Pierce said, without turning to look at Loki. “So we wiped him and put him away. Your experiment didn’t work.”

Loki felt a flare of anger. He felt anger at Pierce for taking the Soldier away from Loki. He felt anger at Pierce for taking the Soldier away from himself, when Loki had been so close to breaking through all that programming, to finding out was beneath it all and proving he could do better than these Midgardians’ best. Because they needed to wipe the slate clean. But Loki could take anyone as they were.

And he felt anger at himself, anger for caring for a mere human and what became of him.

He acted out. He acted like his _brother_ , without control, without thought, and shoved Pierce, who hit the wall opposite.

He didn’t stay to find if Pierce was alive or dead. He didn’t care.

He returned to Asgard. He had been away almost too long, and everything about Midgard grated at him.

When Thor saw his foul mood, he didn’t ask where Loki had gone. But he did offer him space, and for that, Loki was grateful.

\--

Loki had almost forgotten about the Soldier when Heimdall mentioned him. He stood at the Bifrost gate, conversing with Heimdall, in the guise of whom he once called father. Heimdall couldn’t see through it. Loki was certain of that.

“And of my son’s one time companions?”

“The one known as Captain America has a new mission of his own,” Heimdall said. “A man from his childhood, a poor soul now known as the Winter Soldier.”

Loki stopped listening after that. It had been a number of years since his little jaunt on Midgard, but that wasn’t so long ago to him.

Of course, the Soldier would have no recollection of him, and Loki could not go down as Odin. A memory of lips pressed against his would be all that was left.

Loki began crossing the bridge, back to Asgard. But as he did, he glanced away, toward the secret passages, the few that Heimdall still did not know of.

Perhaps, Loki thought, plans forming in his mind, he could have his Soldier yet.


End file.
